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AJQYSOME 
HISTORY OF 



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EDUCATION 



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A Joysome 
History of Education 

For Use in Schools and Small Families 

to which is added a somewhat hilarious appendix 



^By Welland Hendrick 




PUBLISHED BY 

The Point of View 

Nyack, N. Y. 

1909 



L/lzs- 
■Mt 



Copyright 1909 
By Welland Hendrick 



249981 



CONTENTS 



Introduction 






4 


The OIvD-TimkRvS 




The Hebrews .... 


7 


The Greeks 






8 


The Romans 






11 


The Middle Ages 




, 


11 


The Humanists 






13 


Rousseau 






14 


John A. Komensky 






16 


Pestalozzi 






18 


Froebel 






20 


Herbert 


. 


22 


Modern Education 




Germany .... 


27 


England 






29 


France 






30 


Spain 






31 


Dahomey 






32 


The United States 






34 


Topics of Recent 




Educationai. History 




The New Education 


39 


Pedagogical Factories 






40 


Examinations 






42 


Women's Colleges 






44 


Emancipation of Man 






47 


Pedaguese 






49 


Pedaguese vs. English 






54 


The Teaching of Religion 




58 


Appendix 




Vocabulary 




. 


63 



INTRODUCTION 

In the cold gray dawn of the world's morning, 
long ages ago, a little boy and his sister ran 
away from their ancestral cave. In due time 
their mother caught them. Whereupon she at 
once followed her instincts for the natural meth- 
od, as, without any needful adjustment of cloth- 
ing, she briskly laid the flat of her hand upon 
the most inviting rotundity of their bodies. 

This was the natal morn of education. 

Thus we see, tabulated in true pedagogical 
manner : 

a. That the female teacher was the first on 
the job. 

b. The primal right of both sexes to an equal 
education. 

c. The natural born claim of every child to a 
good, wholesome spanking. 

d. Several other things. 



THE 
OLD-TIMERS 



THE OLD-TIMERS 

THE HEBREWS 

The Jews went to educating soon after Noah 
docked his load of nature study material. One 
of the best things about their educational work is 
that the fathers and mothers did it and were not 
continually turning off parental duties on the 
school teachers ; while the modern parent ex- 
pects the schools to teach his children table- 
manners and the art of manicuring their finger 
nails. 

Rebekah was an early Jewish educatress whose 
work has lasted to the present day. While papa's 
pet, Esau, was hunting woodchucks in the field, 
she taught mamma's darling, Jacob, in the house. 
Unfortunately we do not know her method of 
instruction, but we have a record of the results. 
She developed a pupil who could sell his brother 
Esau a gold brick, work a successful confidence 
game on his astute father Isaac, out-cheat his 
wily uncle Laban, and prove himself a shifty, 
successful coward in a later meeting with his 
twin brother. In fact, considering that in his 
day there was nothing like a fire insurance com- 
pany for Jacob to measure up against, he did 
pretty well. 

Seven 



Neither was the physical side of his education 
neglected; for he was trained to the minute for 
his bout with the angel and thus secured a repu- 
tation which silenced any criticism of his career 
as a cheat and dead-beat. Thus it happens that 
the world's ideal of him to-day is of a serene, 
long-bearded effigy of piousness, standing forth 
erect, his arms high-stretched, his palms upward, 
declaring, "it vas all vool unt a yard vide," to 
the convincement of posterity. 

In the domain of education Rebekah certainly 
ranks with Fagin. 



THE GREEKS 

The Greeks produced a hearty, joyous, elastic, 
scintillating, fragrant, sprightly, luscious, tune- 
ful and graceful education, and hence one that 
could not last. But it was quite an education, 
while it was going. 

In the first place they had the most captivating, 
diverting, ingenious, varied and hilarious stock 
of gods and goddesses that has ever been gathered 
together. It was a liberal education in itself for 
a child to learn these divine biographies. 

For instance, there was Hermes, alias Mer- 
cury, celestial secretary of education and stock 
raising — rather a strange combination, but that 
was the way the portfolios were arranged in the 
cabinet of Zeus. Snap shots of Hermes show 
him without pantaloons or underwear, holding 

Eight 



in his hand a stick, tipped with wings and em- 
broidered with snakes. The stick is undeniably 
a black-board pointer. Some of the photographs 
show wings also on Hermes' legs after the fash- 
ion of a shanghai rooster. But wherever they 
are, they indicate that the educating business was 
so ill paid in that day that Hermes had to run 
errands to eke out. 

But there was nothing slow about Hermes, if 
he was a messenger boy. A few hours and some 
odd minutes after he was born, he slipped out 
of his cradle, sneaked ofif to his brother Apollo's 
farm, cut out fifty cattle from the herd and drove 
them ofif. 

When Apollo went after the thief, he found 
the little Hermes, born yesterday, snuggling in- 
nocently in his crib, sucking his bottle and enjoy- 
ing the ootsie-tootsie remarks of his mother. 

There are a lot of modern superintendents of 
education who cannot boast a record like that of 
Hermes. 

One of the first subjects that he introduced into 
schools was music, and in order to do so he in- 
vented the lyre ; but no self-respecting history of 
education will stoop to make a pun about it. 

Hermes originated the alphabet method of 
teaching reading ; and incidentally he invented the 
alphabet itself. As he was about to introduce 
this method in the schools, one of those women 
appeared who in all ages have dabbled in school 
affairs to the provokement of teachers and prin- 

Nine 



cipals. She is the woman afflicted with money, 
leisure and a taste for philanthropy. In this case 
she beset the board of education to adopt the 
word method. 

But the wily Hermes triumphantly pointed out 
that, as he had not yet given out his alphabet and 
there were still no written words, there could be 
no word method of teaching reading. Thus it 
happened that for long centuries to come the dear 
children were prevented from properly beginning 
to read with the word cat. 

The Greeks produced three great teachers. Dr. 
Socrates, Ph. D., (Leipzig), who asked so many 
questions that the envious civil service commis- 
sioners pursued him to the electric chair ; Plato, 
who invented Platonic love, so useful since boards 
of education have forbidden married women to 
teach ; and Aristotle, who originated the art of 
starting with a statement which everybody knows 
to be false and arriving at a conclusion which 
nobody can deny. 

Aristotle was the instructor of Alexander and 
Bucephalus. Bucephalus turned out well. 

The Greeks taught music, drawing, poetry, 
basketry, plain and fancy sewing and the two- 
step. On the walls of their school houses they 
inscribed the motto, ''Give us the fads of educa- 
tion and we care not for the three 'R's.' " A 
Delphic fate took them at their word ; for at last 
they were overcome by Rum, Romanism and 
Rebellion. 



Ten 



THE ROMANS 

The Romans in education may justly be held 
up to the execration of the world. With their 
vicious mania for laws, they proceeded to invent 
the rules of grammar, the evils of which are felt 
in our schools to the present day. As if that 
were not enough, they promoted the study of 
oratory, and so may be held responsible for a 
long train of earthly horrors down to the saddling 
of William J. Bryan upon the democratic party. 

The best the Romans could do in the line of 
teachers was Seneca ; and the most noted pupil 
that he produced was Nero. This is a sad scene 
in the drama of education. The lights of burn- 
ing Rome flash through the windows at the back 
of the stage; the hero-villain, Nero, gazing venge- 
fully out, plays a mournful solo on the violin ; 
and the curtain falls. 



THE MIDDLE AGES 

After the Roman empire adjourned, the schools 
of Europe took a long Easter vacation of some 
five hundred years. Grammar, rhetoric and ora- 
tory had convinced the people that education 
had better be let alone. Then, too, the end of 
the world was advertised to come off at any mo- 
ment, and it wasn't considered worth while to 
start up the education factories. The few classes 
that were taught in the dungeons of the monas- 

Eleven 



leries were instructed in sewing on white goods 
and twanging the harp. 

The people of Europe sat around in the dark- 
ness and thought that the entire world had gone 
to the demnition bow-wows, so to speak. That 
was because, never having gone beyond the fun- 
damental operations in arithmetic, they did not 
know what an exceedingly small and vulgar frac- 
tion they were. 

The fact was, in China the children were go- 
ing to school at nine o'clock every morning and 
learning to sing the wisdom of Confucius to rag 
time. When they grew up, they printed yellow 
journals and ten-cent magazines. They also made 
gunpowder, though its use was restricted to in- 
ternal applications for the relief of a cutaneous 
disease. 

In Arabia the Mohammedans invented the pre- 
cession of the equinoxes ; and the Equatorial Uni- 
versity of Central Africa was so far advanced 
in its career that it was conferring the degree of 
doctor of pedagogy on Ethiopian instructors who 
knew psychology and couldn't teach. 

One indication of the crudeness of the schools 
of Europe during the muddled ages is that they 
taught but seven branches at the most. In this 
day a child who goes home from school with but 
seven books under his arm has properly the fin- 
ger of scorn pointed at him. 



Twelve 



THE HUMANISTS 

The language of the schools at this time was 
Latin, but it was hog-Latin with a down-east 
dialect. No classical Latin or Greek was allowed 
to be imported lest some pagan ideas should get 
into the Christian schools. It happened how- 
ever one day that some one smuggled in a suc- 
culent ode of Horace, a small, hard chunk of 
Caesar's indirect discourse and one of Aris- 
tophanes' Limburger jokes. That was enough. 
From that day the starved, monkish old school- 
men eagerly welcomed the mischievous delights 
of Athens and Rome, and cast the psalms and 
old testament genealogies out of the schools. 
Then the juiciness of Greek learning began to 
trickle again through education ; and the dried- 
up old schoolmasters, after their day's work, 
would get together, lock the doors, pull down the 
shades, and dance an Olympic can-can to their 
chant of Homer's catalogue of ships. *'This," 
they said, "is living. This is human." Hence 
humanists. 

Later on, when the amours of Greek goddesses 
and the charms of Lydia were put to the back- 
ground for the deceptive irregular verb and the 
insidious exception to the despotic rule, they be- 
came inhumanists. But they kept their old name. 

The humanists were the blooded aristocrats of 
education. And their castles crumbling, but yet 
imposing, are still pointed out to eager companies 
of female teachers, as, arrayed in tailor-made 

Thirteen 



suits, spectacles and note-books, they are hurried 
hither and thither by the personal conductors of 
summer excursions. 



ROUSSEAU 

Rousseau had no experience in schools or edu- 
cation. As there were then however no boards of 
education for him to serve upon, he became an 
amateur educational reformer. He wrote a book 
giving an account of a perfectly educated boy, 
Alexander Meal, a name which he shortens to 
A. Meal. 

In properly bringing up this smart Alec, the 
main thing, as it appears in his biography, is to 
keep him from the contaminating influence of 
other human beings. For this purpose he is put 
in a vacuum, while natural air and uncooked food 
are passed in to him through tubes. 

After clearing the yard of all human beings, 
the encased Alec is moved out to commune with 
nature through his glass cage. Nature is O. K., 
it is to be noticed, while mankind and all that he 
does, except to cage up Alec, is vile. Hence the 
boy must learn from nature. 

He is shown the snakes lurking in the grass, 
the tree-toads with their fraud-bark skin and the 
treacherous cat. Thus Alec learns to be simple, 
brave and true from nature He is taken to the 
garden, from which the gardener has been ex- 
pelled, and there sees how nature, triumphing 

Fourteen 



over sordid humanity, has covered the man- 
planted potatoes and onions with luxurious mul- 
lein, burdock and thistles. He is fed on puckery 
wild grapes, not cultivated Catawbas, sour, 
natural fruit of the apple, not orchard Baldwins, 
love-apples, not garden tomatoes ; because na- 
ture does things right, while man with his sort- 
ing, pruning, grafting and other unnatural ways 
brings evil and decadence. 

After a few hundred pages of this stufif we 
recognize Alec as too good for earth, heaven or 
hell, but just fitted for his vacuum. 

But Rousseau did a lot of good with his book 
after all ; for he poked sharp, jagged, hilarious 
fun at the educators. 

This was the first time. 

Before this, teachers had often been scorned, 
shunned, kicked, starved, denounced, imprisoned 
and ignored, but never joked, laughed at and 
ridiculed. Rousseau set the world laughing at 
the school teacher ; and it was bitter medicine. 

With all the modern improvements that have 
been introduced into pedagogues, it has been im- 
possible to produce a kind that will endure to be 
laughed at. Many a joke have they, of course, 
at the methodical springing of which the classes 
join in well feigned glee. But to have themselves 
or their work the butt of a joke, — never. And 
least of all will the modern psychological doctor 
of pedagogy bide a bit of ridicule. Oppose him 
and he flourishes, denounce him and he thrives, 

Fifteen 



laugh at him and he wilts. His fantastic, over- 
stuffed, top-heavy, wobble-kneed, gyrating sys- 
tem of modern education, propped up with his 
metaphysical jargon, patched by meddling legis- 
latures and boards of education, added to and 
torn from by countless associations for the pro- 
motion of things and by other uncountable asso- 
ciations for the suppression of things, is plastered 
all over with signs, — 



^•^PLEASE DO NOT LAUGH AT THIS 



On account of this state of things, it has 
seemed expedient, in this calm, dispassionate sur- 
vey of education, to remove carefully any latent 
sarcasm and all suggestions of light flippancy. 

Xevertheless there seems to be a yearning 
among the people for another Rousseau, just as 
good as the other at tearing down, and a deal 
better at building up. 



JOHN A. KOMENSKY 

The name shows that this man was a foreigner. 
Seen on a sign in Baxter street, city of New 
York, it would suggest ole clodings ; but when 
Komensky is done into Latin as Comenius, we 
recognize the father of the modern school teacher. 
Of course, if you size him up with one of his 
numerous daughters of to-day, the one who sports 
a college degree, eye-glasses and the fervid, 

Sixteen 



psychological brow, Komensky shrivels. But for 
his time he looms. 

The advent of this man served notice on the 
private tutors of the rich, on broken-down preach- 
ers, unsuccessful lawyers and one-legged plumb- 
ers that their lead in the education of the youth 
of the land was about over. Heretofore the 
pedagogue business had been carried on by ped- 
dlers and small retail dealers ; hereafter it was to 
be merged in huge factories and wholesale houses. 

Now the poor boy had a chance, — supposed to 
be the chance to be stuflfed with arithmetic, chem- 
istry, bookkeeping and Choctaw, but really the 
chance to learn that he can make himself, if he 
will, what he will, 

Komensky wrote a lot about the art of teach- 
ing, the most of which is well worth skipping, 
Komensky taught ; and that is worth a good deal. 

John wrote one best seller however and be- 
came immortal. He first conceived the bold idea 
of putting pictures in a school book to illustrate 
the meaning. Little did he dream that in years 
to come illustrations would become so popular 
that publishers would hire writers tO' invent some 
meaning to fit a job lot of plates. 

But the pictures once admitted to the schools 
brought the dawn of a bright, new day. Here's 
to John A. Komensky and the pictured joys of 
our old first reader ! 



Seventeen 



PESTALOZZI 

Pestalozzi was the martyr of education, not 
giving up his Hfe at the stake, but wearing it out 
in the fetid air of the school room. 

He taught a house full of children some twenty- 
four hours in the day, — put his pupils to bed, 
dosed the colicky ones in the night, dressed them 
all in the morning, sewed on buttons, washed 
them, wiped the noses of those who had not ar- 
rived at that grade of advancement, taught them 
songs, stories, letters and the ways of the wiggly 
angleworm, tied up their sore fingers with rags 
and strings, made them honest by being honest 
himself and by refraining from canting talk on 
honesty, and withal brought them to look into 
his pinched, crooked face with eyes of love and 
call him Father Petalozzi. 

There was a great man. Then he wrote a lot 
about how others should teach ; and there was a 
little man. 

True, he wrote one book worth while, and then 
tried to spoil it with sequels and teacheresque 
emendations But some of the book- worshiping 
school teachers of the present day go scraping 
around in the insipid mush of Pestalozzi's writ- 
ings for choice bits to feed the apprentices at the 
pedagogue factories. Here are some samples : 

"In going to a place where you are not from a 
place where you are, you should start from the 
place where you are and proceed to the place where 
you are not, at each step placing your foot on a 

Eighteen 



nearer spot before putting it on the spot more re- 
mote." 

"Always try to learn that which you do not know 
by means of that which you do know; and so avoid 
the common error of trying to learn that which you 
already know by means of that which you do not 
know." 

"In teaching use the natural method. The nat- 
ural method is the method of nature; and the meth- 
od of nature will easily be recognized because it 
is natural." 

But it would leave a sultry taste in the mouth 
to drop Pestalozzi here. 

The Swiss school teacher once visited Paris ; 
and rigidly refraining from dalliance with the de- 
lights of the Rue de Rivoli, he put in his hours 
in an attempt to pour his ideas into the ear of 
Napoleon. But the emperor sent word out to 
the anteroom that he had no time to spend with 
book agents and alphabet peddlers. 

When Pestalozzi got home, a townsman asked 
him if he saw the emperor. "No," the school- 
master replied, "I did not see Napoleon ; and 
what is more Napoleon did not see me." 

The poor, harassed, disrupted Germans how- 
ever gave ear to Pestalozzi and his scheme of 
universal education. And in the fullness of time, 
which was the fifty years required to educate two 
generations of children, a lot of German soldiers 
made a flying summer's tour of France and quite 
captivated the Parisians, together with Napoleon 
number three. Upon that, a gentleman by the 

Nineteen 



name of von Moltke, who had charge of the ex- 
cursion, is said to have remarked that the deed 
was really done by the German schoolmasters. 
Here is a good place to leave Pestalozzi. 



FROEBEL 

Froebel invented the baby school. 

We shall now review, as the school teacher 
remarks : 

Socrates wanted his pupils ripe, — full grown. 
Rousseau had no use for an education which be- 
gan before the age of twelve. Komensky brought 
the age limit down to six ; while Froebel cut that 
figure in half. 

If this sort of thing goes on, the attendance 
officers will soon be around, stalking into the 
houses and feeling in the baby's mouth for the 
first tooth as the legal determinant of school age. 
By that time the parents will have little to do 
after paying the initial doctor's bill. Possibly 
even government physicians will be appointed 
and eye-glasses and lacteal lunches furnished for 
the baby. 

And yet some people are wondering why social- 
ism is rampant in the land. 

Froebel, like many other school-room reform- 
ers, was stricken with the dread disease of nat- 
ural method, but seemed to recover a fair state of 
sanity. 

No other sect of the school teaching sorority 

Twenty 



so worships its prophet and so literally obeys his 
inspired word as the Froebelians. If you but 
question a command of the inspired revelator of 
their creed, they eye you with the injured look 
of a nun listening to profanity. 

There is however a ^heterodox schism in the 
fold, — new religionists of the kindergarten creed, 
— who claim that at times we need not take the 
words of the prophet literally, and that we may 
vary a little his consecrated order of things. 

For instance, the orthodox call the yarn balls, 
blocks, teddy bears and rubber chewing rings 
doled out to the babies, gifts; while the new 
theology would describe them as loans; because 
they are not really given, you know. Some too 
are so far astray from orthodoxy that they doubt 
even the necessity of invariably passing around 
the balls as loan number one, and want to try 
the blocks first, just to see what will happen. 
Still there is not much progress made by this 
branch of the kindergartners, for sinful, skeptical 
man is not found in the fold. 

Laying theory aside, the kindergarten is one 
of the prettiest sights in the world. And the 
kindergartner, — well, no one ever saw a homely 
kindergartner. If they start in homely, they get 
over it. 

It is suggestive to note in this connection that 
statistics show the average term of service of a 
kindergartner to be two years, three months and 
seven days. The fact is, the men have found out 

Twent^-one 



that the government is elaborately training, free 
of expense, just what they are after. Young 
men who want the best there is should take no- 
tice and apply early ; for competition is brisk ; and 
at any rate an overtrained kindergartner, like an 
athlete, is apt to go stale. 



HERB ART 

The best thing about Herbart was himself; 
the worst that can be laid to his charge is the 
Herbartians. 

Herbart taught the doctrine of interest in edu- 
cation. In the early part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury he startled the pedagogic world with a series 
of psychological experiments conducted at the 
university of Konigsberg-way-ofif-the-Rhine, Ger- 
many. He proved to the students who flocked to 
his lectures, by actual and repeated demonstra- 
tions, that, in teaching a puppy anything, say, to 
sit up on his hind legs, the quickest, most efifec- 
tive and lasting method is first to excite his in- 
terest by showing him a piece of meat. This 
basis dogmatically established, it may be proved 
in psychological terms, which the confines of this 
treatise will not allow us to reproduce, that the 
method of exciting interest is likewise best in the 
instruction of young human beings. 

While to those who rely upon the uncertain- 
ties of common sense this idea may seem simple 

Twenty-two 



and one likely to have occurred to Adam when 
raising Cain, yet elaborated, as it is by the mod- 
ern disciples of Herbart, in the terms of 
psychological pedagogy, it fills several hun- 
dred volumes. 

Indeed, it is more than suspected that they 
have overdone the matter. So far as the Her- 
bartians have succeeded in getting their ideas 
into the schools, — and that is not a little, — they 
have made the instruction and operations of the 
schoolroom a stupendous hippodromic exhibition ; 
and they bave turned the teacher into a vaude- 
ville artist and professional entertainer. This, in 
the language of ^sop's frog, may be fun for the 
children, but it's death to the high-pressure 
teacher. 

Possibly it was not Madame de Stael who ex- 
claimed, "O Herbart, what ineffable bosh has 
been perpetrated in thy name !" 

A personal inspection of an elementary school, 
run by higih-priced Herbartians, and equipped 
with every conceivable piece of dramatic stage 
property which tainted endowment could buy, 
shows the following results : 

Years t-2 — Interest. 

Years 3-4 — Less interest. 

Years 5-6 — Indifiference. 

Years 7-8 — The blase air of the bald-headed 



theatergoer. 



Twenty-three 



General result — A young candidate for success 
who approaches the struggle of life with the 
proposition, "amuse me, and I may do a littlq 
work." 

This is the history of a good idea done to death. 




Twenty-four 



MODERN 
EDUCATION 



MODERN EDUCATION 

GERMANY 

"Made in Germany,"' is the brand which placed 
on a scholar insures his acceptance as an A num- 
ber-one product. 

In Germany a child starts for school shortly 
before sunrise and stays till the cows come home, 
with occasional stops for pretzels and beer. As 
a result, when he reaches the university, he can 
throw in a liter of beer between breaths. 

Every year commissions of learned men are 
sent to Germany by the governments of othei 
countries in order to learn the secret of its pri- 
macy in school affairs. On their arrival they are 
handed a book of German philosophy ; and after 
struggling through the introduction to this, they 
go home and print a two-volume report on the 
German schools. Nobody understands the matter 
any better ; and after a few years another com- 
mission is sent. 

Once a Long Island City alderman, who could 
not read or write, worked a pull and was dis- 
patched on such a mission. His report was as 
follows : 

"German schools are good because the teaching 
is done by men who make a business of it, and not 

Twenty-seven 



by callow students of law, medicine and theology. 
Moreover, being men, marriage does not cut 
short their career in the school room, nor does it 
appear that failure to marry has a depressing 
effect upon them. Sentiment and hysterics seem 
to be at a discount in the German schools." 

This report was suppressed, because the edu- 
cators justly felt that it should have been swelled 
to a volume at least, after being saturated in 
pyschological phraseology. 

In the German universities there are men from 
all over the world and Kansas who have failed 
at home to teach a common district school or 
manage a class of ten-year-old boys. They go 
back, after getting a degree, and become college 
professors, instructors in pedagogical schools, and 
superintendents and supervisors of teachers. 
They say it is the beer that does it. 




Twenty-eight 



ENGLAND 

In England they teach everything but EngHsh 
to EngHsh children, in English schools, under 
English teachers, from books written by English- 
men, according to the methods of good old 
Hingland. 

Perhaps there could be nothing better. We 
understand however that during the past few 
years the idea has been gaining headway slowly 
in remote parts of England that there mig'ht be 
something better. 

It will strike the careful observer of events as 
significant that this change of sentiment has fol- 
lowed the completion of a course of instruction, 
on the part of many young Englishmen, in the 
University of South Africa, the late Oom Paul, 
LL. D., president. Those who took the work 
there began to feel that there were many things 
which they had not known before, and which they 
might learn from foreign instructors. 




Twenty-nine 



FRANCE 

In France every child is early taught that it 
may grow up and become a Sarah Bernhardt, sub- 
ject to no conditions of blood or wealth, simply 
to the exactions of sex ; otherwise the dhild may 
become a man-milliner, and, while having his 
teeth attended to by an American dentist, still 
retain a competency wrested from a Yankee 
clientele. 

In some countries the educators pride them- 
selves on their up-to-dateness. The French 
teachers, like the Frenchmen in other callings, 
recognize that the only sure way of keeping 
abreast of tJhe times is to keep ahead. 

One illustration will do: In geography the 
French schoolmaster teaches that Alsace and 
Lorraine are in France. Then cautioning his 
boys that they may find otherwise in trans- 
Rhenish-made maps, he asks, ''But who are the 
real map-makers?" At this question he turns 
around and looks silently for a moment at the 
picture of Napoleon behind the desk. Then 
wheeling again suddenly and pointing severally to 
his best boys, he exclaims with the eloquence of 
a Mirabeau, "You — you — you !" 

There may be something in that. 



Thirty 



SPAIN 



Thirtv-one 



DAHOMEY 

Education in Dahomey has not received proper 
attention in works of this kind, owing to the 
wide-spread impression that the absence of foot- 
ball in that country forbids anything but ele- 
mentary work in the schools. The fact is that 
football has to be discouraged in the kingdom 
because of the hereditary inclination of the people 
to look upon the fatally injured in the light of 
breakfast food. 

But the best people of Dahomey, those who 
are versed in the laws of hygienic foods, are 
waging a valiant crusade against cannibalism, 
and have nearly eradicated it. For a time much 
was expected in this line from the Women's 
Heathen Vegetarian Union, who succeeded in 
getting into the schools what they called the 
scientific study of the effect upon the human sys- 
tem of mutual gastronomy. The legislature of 
Dahomey at one session received forty-eight tons 
of letters from women and preachers, threatening 
the members with defeat at the polls, if they 
didn't pass their bill. Like the legislatures and 
congresses of civilized countries, they passed it. 

Later on, the king took a hand. Now, when 
the king of Dahomey takes part in legislation, he 
walks right in among the legislators with a big 
stick in his hand and says things. As it appears, 
he had discovered that back of this school bill was 
a lobby managed by one of the sleekest women 
politicians that ever lived, and who was inter- 

Thirty-two 



ested in selling text-books and charts of canni- 
bals' stomachs. It was during the agitation of 
this matter that the potentate called the school 
teachers together in order to get their ideas on 
the subject; and this is notable indeed, as the 
only recorded instance in the history of any 
country when teachers have been seriously con- 
sulted in reference to school legislation. 

It was made plain at this conference that, ac- 
cording to a simple law of human nature, — known 
to pedagogues, but not to women with philan- 
thropic bees in their bonnets, — children incline to 
do the thing against which they are continually 
warned. An instance was related by one of the 
Dahomey principals of some of his boys, who 
conceived a startling idea from a beautiful les- 
son on the evils of cannibalism, and who at the 
next recess were found in a secluded spot with 
pepper and salt, a pot of boiling water, and one 
of their number already chosen for laboratory 
investigation in dietetics. 

The subject is no longer taught in the Da- 
homey schools. 

Eye-glasses, lunches and loin-cloths are not 
furnished by the government to the children in 
the schools. Curiously enough, the king says that 
such schemes savor too much of paternalism. 



Thirty-three 



THE UNITED STATES 

The first settlers of Virginia, having forgotten 
to bring their children with them, were prone to 
vent their educative efforts upon the untutored 
children of the forest. It cannot be denied that 
reference is here made to the Indians. Recogniz- 
ing the fact from Smith's psychology that the 
end of education is to make people good and that 
the only good Indian is the dead Indian, they 
proceeded at the psychological moment to make 
good. Not being able to reach all the objects 
of their solicitation, in this way, owing to the 
short range of their primitive methods, they in- 
troduced among their pagan pupils the civilizing 
influence of whiskey and consumption, in this 
way instituting what may be viewed in the light 
of a finishing school. 

The Mayflower contingent brought with them 
a portable schoolhouse. This they set up on the 
afternoon of their arrival and announced school 
the next morning by the ringing of a cowbell. 

They were bound to be first in education in 
Massachusetts as well as in everything else, and 
to let people know it. 

We are allowed to insert the following ex- 
tracts from the diary of the first teacher in Bos- 
ton : 

April i8 — Organized school and taught all 
day. 

April 19 — Dismissed school to celebrate fore- 
fathers' day. 

Thirty-four 



April 20 — Thought best to have no school to- 
day. Got over the effects of yesterday and talked 
with the neighbors about what we had accom- 
plished in education. 

April 21— Saturday; taught half-day. Talked 
more. 

April 22 — Sunday; could not talk about what 
the school has accomplished for the world but 
thought about it. 

April 23-30 — Temporarily suspended school. 
Busy preparing articles for t'he newspapers on 
the progress of education in Massachusetts. 

May I — Called school together again and 
taught a full day. 

May 2 — Dismissed school in the afternoon to 
allow the children to see the public whipping of a 
Quaker who in his speech bad omitted the usual 
courteous civilities to our governor. Shall use 
the incident for inculcating lessons of civil gov- 
ernment. 

May 3-23 — Spring vacation. Put in my time 
writing a book on my career as an educator and 
author. 

May 24 — Called school but found that the 
selectmen have had to take the room to store the 
rum used in trading with the Indians. 

May 25-June 6 — Schoolroom still occupied. 
Prepared a lecture to be delivered in other col- 
onies on the educators and writers of Massachu- 
setts. 

Thirty-five 



June 7-Sept. 3 — Summer vacation. Traveled 
and lectured in the outlying colonies. 

Sept. 4 — Returned home and spoke in Faneuil 
hall on my lecture trip and the ignorance of the 
other colonies. 

Sept. 5 — Determined to write a history of 
Massachusetts, making educational and literary 
matters prominent. Shall refer to the other col- 
onies, and call it the History of America. 

Sept. 6 — Taught school all day in order to pro- 
vide material for another volume of my history. 

All this time, over in New Amsterdam, the 
Dutdh were sawing wood, trapping beavers and 
teaching sdhool, as though it were all the most 
natural thing in the world. But they clearly war- 
ranted their reputation for dunderpates, for they 
did not advertise themselves. 

Adam Roelantsen was the first schoolmaster 
of Gotham ; but so quiet was he about it that 
the seeing-New-Amsterdam wagon never croaked 
a megaphone as it passed his door. Adam was 
a gay bird, it is to be feared. He took in washing, 
sang in the choir, dug graves and got rip-roaring 
drunk. 

There is a Roelantsen club among the teachers 
of the city of New York now ; but nobody knows 
what phase of their hero's life they celebrate at 
their meetings. 



Thirty-six 



TOPICS OF RECENT 
EDUCATIONAL HISTORY 



TOPICS OF RECENT 
EDUCATIONAL HISTORY 

THE NEW EDUCATION 

When a man announces himself a high priest 
of the new education, he thereby brands those 
who do not fall down before the god of his peda- 
gogical method as old fogies. Since this is easily 
satisfying tO' the high priest and doesn't worry 
the old fogies, the new education becomes a 
phrase for summoning spirits from the vasty deep. 

No satisfactory explanation of this expression 
has ever been given, and so it is well to attempt 
a clearing up of the same. It is suspected that 
the leaders of the cult themselves do not under- 
stand what it is ; certainly they do not agree as 
to its true inwardness ; which leads many to sup- 
pose that it is entirely composed of outwardness. 
The fact is that the recently invented terminology 
of the subject is so intricate and profound that 
it is impossible for those who know merely the 
language of human beings to tell much about it. 

Once upon a time three ardhbishops of the 
creed gave addresses at a certain educational 
gathering on the new education. After the am- 
bulances had cleared away the audience, the three 
speakers were gathered by a reporter around a 

Thirty-nine 



secluded table at the hotel. It was in the room 
where the lights dance merrily through the many- 
colored glasses, and all men are reduced to a 
common denominator. The three speakers, by 
the way, were really good fellows and quite sane 
upon all subjects but their pedagogical fad. 

After the reporter had set up several rounds of 
the grateful fluids mentioned slightingly by the 
prohibition physiologies, he remarked, 

''We go to press in an (hour, and I've been 
listening to you fellows since eight o'clock. Now 
please tell me, as man ito man, what is this new 
education anyway?" 

As he looked from one to another, the answers 
were respectively: 

a. "Damfino." 

b. ''Search me." 

c. "Nother o' shame, pleash." 



PEDAGOGICAL FACTORIES 

One of the notable events of the last fifty years 
of educational history is the establishment of 
large concerns for the manufacture of teachers. 
This factory product is largely taking the place 
of the hand-made article ; and, as in the case of 
sashes and doors, the machine-made kind, while 
supplying the demand for quantity, has been 
somewhat monotonous and depressing in quality. 
But improvements in the machinery used may 
be expected to remedy this defect. 

Forty 



The first efforts toward the wholesale produc- 
tion of pedagogues — not now altogether super- 
seded — were similar to the methods of the gold 
cure. This procedure is to take a large body of 
students and ignoramuses alike, and hypodermi- 
cally inject into each one, several times a day, 
three magic serums, labeled psychology, history 
and principles of education, and methods. It is 
now beginning to be recognized that the igno- 
ramuses cannot by such means be converted into 
intelligent instructors, and also that too much of 
the serum deadens the faculties of the students. 

The most urgent need of the present time is 
that these pedagogical supply concerns be fitted 
with machinery for working up by-products, as 
in the case of all paying modern manufactories. 
The trouble has been that stock, which might 
have been made into good washerwomen, excel- 
lent cooks, competent bargain-counter tenders, 
efficient street cleaners and impressive headwait- 
ers, has been turned out as second-class teachers. 

In apology for what they have been doing, the 
managers of the plants say that they couldn't turn 
away the poor stuff, because of their dependent 
families. For some reason their tenderhearted- 
ness has not gone out to the generations of young 
children, who are thus compelled to pass their 
school days under incompetents. 

But on the whole the factory-made product is 
ahead of the self-made, self-adjusting, self-oiling 
and self-righteous article. 

Forty-one 



EXAMINATIONS 

The invention of written examinations has 
been variously credited, by those who have fallen 
below 60% in these tests, to Cain, Balaam, Judas 
Iscariot, Guy Fawkes and Benedict Arnold. 
Numerous societies for the abolition and pro- 
hibition of examinations have sprung up, flour- 
ished and decayed, after effecting a marked in- 
crease in the number and frequency of said ex- 
aminations. 

The fact seems to be that, like other stimu- 
lants, these strenuous scholastic tests are detri- 
mental only in excess. 

The state of New York, which produced Aaron 
Burr and Tom Piatt and perfected the political 
machine, has the most intricate and highly pol- 
ished mechanism of examinations outside of 
China — an apparatus which other states and 
countries seem to take in the light of a warning 
rather than of a model. 

It is estimated that the introduction of civil 
service examinations in recent years has added 
nearly a centimeter to the stature of each school- 
master. For now with pride and certainty they 
can point to the spelling book and the map of 
the world and say, "this way only to a job." 

The effect of the system on the country at large 
is worth considering too. Now our office holders, 
instead of being the politicians' pets, who know 
men but not books, are the pedagogues' delights, 
who know books but not men. Take your choice. 

Forty-two 



"Dar am two ways froo dis world," said tlie 
preacher ; "one am de broad road leadin' to de- 
struction ; an' de udder am de strait an' narrer 
road leadin' to sure perdition." 

The comment of Deacon Snowball was, "If 
dat am de sitivation, dis chil' takes to de woods." 

Those who paint for us the gaily-colored mil- 
lennium, which civil service examinations are to 
bring some fine day, seem to miss the fact that 
this millennium has been on ex^hibition for more 
than a thousand years in China. 

Mr. Merit Fitness will write his way closest to 
1 00% and get the government job about the same 
lime in this world's history that the manager of 
a big concern says to his right-hand man : 

"Clarkson, we must have a good fellow to take 
charge of our San Francisco office, keen, adapt- 
able, smooth and untiring, and a man that knows 
our business thoroughly. Now get up a paper 
in astronomy, geography, history of Japan, and 
that stuff they call English, and advertise for can- 
didates." 




Forty-three 



WOMEN S COLLEGES 

The rise of women's colleges has opened a 
new field to newspaper paragraphers and relieved 
the tension on the old jokes about mother-in-laws, 
mules' hind legs and wifey's first cookies. But 
the jests about lady football players are by no 
means so injurious to the new institutions as the 
appellation of "female colleges." 

These schools would seem to be organized and 
maintained in order to prove that girls are the 
intellectual equals of boys. But this probably is 
not the real object ; it just seems to be. 

There is something persistently and pertina- 
ciously pugnacious about the way a woman pro- 
fessor will ever argue about the mental equality 
of the sexes, when everybody long ago was more 
than willing to admit it. A certain woman, a 
college president, once had a paper before an 
august educational body. Her topic might have 
been "The Cultural Value of Dissecting Frogs;" 
it wasn't ; but it doesn't matter ; for she spent the 
most of iher time tensely arguing the intellectual 
equality of women. 

There seems to be an insane fear at the wo- 
men's colleges that some college for men will do 
a piece of work not in the women's college cur- 
riculum. Accordingly anything anywhere so ad- 
vertised must go in ; and it doesn't merely go into 
the catalogue either ; it goes in large doses into 

Forty- four 



the girls. Then too every other women's col- 
kge is watched with cat's eyes ; and if they do 
a new thing, or an old thing in a harder way, in 
that goes too. If a text-book appears, deeper, 
duller and more abstruse, it is adopted ; and day 
and night a house-cleaning raid goes on against 
easy texts and snap courses. 

"^'Nay, nay," said a stern-browed woman pro- 
fessor once to a publisher, **your book is too 
simple and clear. If iit were on our list it would 
be said that we are not doing the work of the 
first colleges. Our texts must r-r-rigorous, 
r-r-r-rigorous, r-r-r-r-rigorous." A fact, even to 
the rigid thrilling of the R's. 

The equals of men? Why women are easily 
the superiors, if the amount of college work 
proves anything. 

Note, by the way, that nothing at the men's 
colleges can compare with the academic rivalry 
of their sister institutions. The Vassar senior 
s'peaks slightingly of Smith as a high school ; and 
the Smith senior refers charitably to Vassar as 
a prep school ; while the Princeton senior cares 
not a flip about the relaitive strength of Yale's 
course of study, if only old Nassau gets the 
game. 

At the holiday vacation the college girls hasten 
back with feverish brow and glinting eye a day 
ahead of the term; but the boys saunter back a 
day late and trust to luck to make it up. And 
does this show that the boys are mentally strong- 

Forty-five 



er ? Not a bit of it ; simply that their college is 
not demonstrating anything.* 

The situation, whatever its cause, is certainly 
toug'h on the girls : So we willingly make a place 
for the following letter of 

APPEAL. 

To the Respected Members of the Faculties of 
the Women's Colleges: 

Hail! We admit it. They are. What we mean 
is that John and Jane are mentally equal, especially 
Jane. So can't you in some way let up on poor 
Jane? It really doesn't seem necessary to pile it 
on so. It won't be an eternal disgrace to her, if 
she doesn't do everything done at Harvard, Oxford 
and Heidelberg. Then too we wish most respect- 
fully to ask another thing. We will suppose that 
it is necessary for your peace of mind to keep on 
demonstrating this equality, and then we will sup- 
pose that sometime the demonstration is done, — 
what then? H the college is for Jane and not Jane 
for the college, is it worth while for her? Is it 
then proved that the education in which Jane equals 
and perhaps excels John is the best education for 
her? Will she be the better woman for having it? 
We love Jane and we want to know. 



* NOTE. — It has just occurred to us that the absence of foot notes 
will detract from the scholarly appearance of this work ; and we 
hasten to put one in. Another commen tf- tor gives this explanation 
of the situation, which coming from the biased point of view of a 
man, must be properly discounted. He offers that the specialists at 
the men's colleges are better balanced than the women, and do not 
dost' out their requirements on the apparent supposition that at 
Heaven's gate Saint Peter will hold up the candidate for the last bit 
of information in their particular departments. 

Forty-six 



But above all, don't forget that we admit il. 
There is a crabbed old bachelor in the next house 
and he admits it. Everybody admits it. Roosevelt 
admits it. 

Again hail, and farewell! 

JANE'S FRIENDS. 

P. S. We admit it again. 

In conclusion, if our theory to account for an 
undoubted condition, crying unto heaven, is not 
correct, we can only perplexedly ask, as Artemus 
Ward once painfully inquired, *'Why is this thus, 
what is the reason of this thusness?" 



THK EMANCIPATION OF MAN 

The crowning event of modern school history is 
the coming of the school ma'am, and the conse- 
quent impetus to the approaching emancipation 
of man. The strong-minded woman on the plat- 
form and the poor harassed man of a school- 
master may not see just how this thing works 
out ; but the air is laden with the fragrance of a 
new freedom for mere man. 

Some years ago, in manufacturing towns, 
where women were largely employed, it was no- 
ticed that there was appearing a small but fast 
increasing body of well-fed, well-dressed, non- 
working men with visible means of support in 
the shape of sisters, daughters, wives and moth- 

Forty-seven 



ers. Nothing has so served to raise this class 
to considerable proportions as the mighty, swell- 
ing wave of school ma'ams. 

It may astonish the unobservant to read the 
statistics — though nothing in this easily manu- 
factured line ought to surprise anybody — statis- 
tics to the effect that the half million school 
ma'ams in the United States now support 372,- 
519 men in comfort and ease. Some exceptional 
teachers maintain three, a few more two, many 
one, while the mass of them unite in twos and 
threes to supply the best fifteen-cent drinks for 
one man. 

And this is only the merest beginning of the 
new order of things in all occupations. The re- 
sult is absolute, inevitable. Only a certain fixed 
proportion of the population will labor for the 
sustenance of all. The more women, the less 
men. The more pay for women, the more com- 
forts for men. Soon mankind, male mankind, 
who has long fought the battles and struggled 
with the work of the world, will resign his irk- 
some task and subsist on the fast increasing earn- 
ings of the women. Soon legislators will see 
their own advantage — unless perchance the wo- 
men get control — and grant their sisters equal 
work. for equal pay. Then no longer will thin, 
worried men, going home from their work, grasp 
eagerly for the car straps, while sleek, compla- 
cent women, back from their inspection of the 
shops, rest contentedly in the seats. 

Forty eight 



True, the linen may not be so well laundered, 
the meals so well cooked, or the baby — but maybe 
there'll be no bothersome baby then — yet all this 
may be overlooked in the glad day of man's 
emancipation. 

Is this a dream? 

Not at all. The evidence is at hand for the 
discerning. It is well understood that the popu- 
lar songs of the people are an indication of public 
sentiment and social tendencies ; and surely no 
little ballad has so touched a sympathetic chord, 
as did, a few years since, the tender notes of 
"Everybody Works but Father." There should 
however be no undercurrent of paternal dis- 
respect in the song. Soon there will be none. 
Soon may the happy children, — what are left, — 
carol the glee sweetly in the schools, and the wise 
and learned schoolmistress stand before them 
and tell them the full meaning of the pregnant 
ditty, and recount to them the story of the eman- 
cipation of that oldest of slaves, — man ! 



PEDAGUESE 

It is painful for us to use this new and un- 
tried word ; but we must do it. The pedagogues 
have of late invented so many new terms, phrases 
and idioms, and have given their own mysterious 
meanings to so many common expressions, that 
it is now absolutely necessary to have a word 
which shall name this new language. 

Fortv-nine 



The initiated of all occupations, — lawyers, 
printers and tramps, — have a tendency to develop 
a terminology of their own. And herein is a 
sign of the incurable human instinct for caste. 
And now the pedagogues bid fair to outdo the 
rest ; and this is an indication that the aristocracy 
of learning is more snobbish than any possible 
aristocracy of blood or cash. 

Now one of the first tasks of a self-satisfied ar- 
istocracy is to brand itself with a protective trade- 
mark and keep out the common herd. For the 
aristocracy of birth this barrier is a title, for the 
moneyed set it is that which money can buy, and 
for the learned it is language. 

In thus preserving an exclusive set of the 
learned, the Egyptians were the most efifective ; 
for with more than masonic success they kept the 
way to knowledge a mysterious secret. In a later 
day came the humanists, who barred the road to 
the mysteries of geography and algebra with the 
greater mysteries of Latin. 

And now, although the sacred curtain of hiero- 
glyphics and Latin has been torn away, behold, 
the modern pedagogue, with a like instinct, seeks 
to conceal the profundities of education with a 
dialect which in some respects is more enigmati- 
cal than the deceased classics. 

Still, it is to be noted, that the doctor too has 
a language capable of making mightily momen- 
tous that which common men call the stomach 
ache; and the lawyer with his legal phrases ren- 

Fifty 



ders it difficult for the layman to write his will or 
sell a piece of ground ; and also the clergyman 
mystifies the already mysterious with more mys- 
tic words ; and shall not the teacher in like man- 
ner exploit the importance of the science of 
pedagogy? 

Curiously enougih however it happens, while 
this complicated language of the school teacher 
is growing up, that there is a noticeable tendency 
in law, medicine and even in conservative theol- 
ogy toward the plain, simple language of the 
common man. This is easily accounted for. 
These professions have won their way ; and they 
no longer contain an inefficient majority who 
must cover their dearth of ideas with a profusion 
of words. But teaching is still a new vocation ; 
and the teachers long for the time when their 
business shall be recognized as a profession. To 
this end many of them feel that they must mag- 
nify their calling and confound the uninitiated 
with a wondrous technicality of language. It is 
but natural. They must invent such a language, 
whether or not there are ideas to justify it. They 
have invented it. It is pedaguese. 

Here are some sample sentences of the new 
language from a book of 358 pages, published 
in 1905, entitled ''The Educative Process." 

"Upon what basis shall the agency of formal edu~ 
cation select the experiences that are to function in 
modifying adjustments?" (p. 40.) 

This typical sentence illustrates a remarkable 

Fiftv-one 



feature of the language, namely its peculiar inter- 
changeability of words. For instance, as we are 
assured by one of the most learned pedaguese 
scholars in the United States, including Guam, 
the expression "experiences that are to function 
in modifying adjustments" means the same as 
the adjustments that are to modify in function- 
ing experiences, or the functions tihat are to ad- 
just in experiencing modifications, or the modifi- 
cations that are to experience in adjusting func- 
tions. If you don't see the meaning of it in any 
form read this : 

"The fact that the organization of experience in 
coherent systems is a fundamental factor in promot- 
ing the application of experience to the practical 
improvement of adjustment is profoundly significant 
to the process of education." (p. 164.) 

What is significant is that at first sight you 
may think this is English ; but it isn't. Each 
word may look like some English word ; but there 
is a difiference. You may have an idea that a 
word is a simple thing, but notice : 

"The word 'horse' is just as much a matter of 
concrete auditory kinsesthetic or visual kinaesthetic 
imagery as the image of a particular horse is a 
matter of visual imagery." (p. 173.) 

Now, if you know pedaguese, you know what 
the difiference is ; if you don't, you don't ; that's 
all. 

Another beauty of pedaguese is that when a 
writer runs out of his peculiar vocabulary, he 
may simply string along some common words. 

Fifty- two 



quite meaningless in the vernacular, but to the 
initiated full of profound pedagogical truths. 
We quote three continuous sentences, sixty-tour 
words, from a book of 291 pages, published in 
1903, entitled ''Special Method in History." We 
could readily quote pages of the like 

"As children grow they are expected to grow 
out of one age into another." 

Do you fathom the profundity? Probably not. 
That is because the thought is deep and you are 
shallow. "Expected to!" Think of it! 

"J"st to the extent to which a child really lives 
and experiences a period of history, he should out- 
grow it and never be compelled to become immersed 
in it again." 

This might seem to be simple English ; but in 
the long watches of the night we have struggled 
on it in vain. Is a "period of history" in peda- 
gogical lore something like measles? 

"It will re-echo in his later experience, but the 
man should never become a boy again in the full 
sense." 

No, indeed he should not ; so many men do, 
you know ; and it's a bad habit. "In the full 
sense," too; that's awful. We thought we were 
getting something out of this sentence, until the 
last phrase slapped us in the face But we for- 
get ; this isn't English ; and to consider it as such 
would be to convict the writer of driveling idiocy. 
However in that case we might get a little 
mathematical drill out of it. 

Fiftv three 



Class in arithmetic, attention ! 

If 64 words come to nought, what will 64,000 
words amount to at the same rate? 

It appears upon investigation that only a few 
teachers really talk this language ; but it has its 
vogue from the large number who, without a 
speaking acquaintance, admire it from afar. A 
careful compilation shows the following figures 
in the matter of the relation of teachers to peda- 
guese : 

Use it and think they understand it 12% 

Have used it and thought the}' understood it, 

don't now 2 

Use it, but don't understand it 9 

Think they understand it; but don't use it.. .. 6 
Don't understand it; don't use it, but listen 

with awe to those who do 51 

Think it is rot 20 



PEDAGUESE VS. ENGLISH 

After an examination of the marvelous mass 
of pedaguese literature published in the past 
few years, the following quotations from an arti- 
cle in the Cosmopolitan, some years ago, are 
taken as model selections for translation into 
English. 

One of the most enlightening parts of the essay 
is its English title, "Encouraging the Mental 
Powers of Children ;" for without this consider- 
ate help one might long grope for a key to the 
meaning of the text. The author's name is not 

Fifty- four 



recalled but it was something like Shaw or 
OTshaw. 

We offer the pedaguese original and the Eng- 
lish in parallel columns : 



Origrinal 

Now, one of the deepest 
instincts in the human 
soul, one which had to be 
developed earliest and 
emphasized all through 
the history of creation, is 
that which is charged 
with the preservation of 
self against all destruc- 
tive forces. It needs lit- 
tle reflection to see that 
if this had not been made 
an attribute of mind from 
the start, life as we know 
it could not have existed 
upon the earth; the 
scheme of things which 
we see in operation in the 
universe would have been 
imipossible without this 
great conservative agent. 

Now, just note how ev- 
erything in the young 
child's life gets a mean- 
ing by the way in which 
it affects his well-being. 
Indifferent things are not 
attended to; the child 
cares not about that 
which gives him neither 
pleasure nor pain, which 
neither heightens the tide 
of life nor depresses it. 

This desire to preserve 
self seems to be concern- 
ed at first entirely with 
the physical side of the 
child's being, but soon 



Translation. 



Self preservation is the 
first law of nature. 



Children do not care 
about that which they do 
not care about. 



Fifty -five 



his spiritual nature makes 
manifest its right to live 
and thrive and bloom 
forth in season into a 
distinct individuality. No- 
thing seems clearer to 
me, as I observe and 
wonder at a child, than 
that the Creator gave 
him a soul-life which is 
peculiarly his, and charg- 
ed him to guard it 
against mutilation or ef- 
facement. So he asserts 
himself, he struggles 
against the domination of 
his personality by that of 
others. 

The scientists of our 
day are regarding the 
mind very differently, in 
many respects, from the 
way in which it has been 
conceived in the past and 
is viewed in the present 
by the so called common- 
sense philosophers. 

One of the most impor- 
tant newer views, which 
grows hourly clearer as 
the sun of science mounts 
higher up the heavens of 
our knowledge, considers 
the mind to have been 
given to man to adapt 
him to his environments 
both natural and spiritual. 
In order that his life may 
be preserved and that he 
may attain the objects of 
his creation, he must be 
endowed with an intelli- 
gence by which he may 
bring himself into har- 
mony with nature, with 



I am surprised to see 
the above-mentioned law 
working in the young hu- 
man animal, first before 
it thinks, then afterward. 
It is clear that the Cre- 
ator knew what he was 
about. 



Not much was known 
of education, until lately, 
when I and a few others 
got hold of it. 



We have discovered 
that mind has been given 
man that he may know 
that fire burns, water 
drowns, trolleys mangle, 
exercise is better than 
pills, and that he must 
take things as he finds 
them. 



Fifty -six 



his fellow-man and with 
his Creator. 

Again this intelligence, 
like the body whose des- 
tinies it priesides over, 
has been skilfully mod- 
elled to its present pro- 
portions by gradual modi- 
fications throughout the 
history of life on the » 

earth. As life grew more 
complex and the possibil- 
ities of adaption increas- 
ed pari passu, a constant- 
ly ascending order of in- 
telligence was needed to 
secure preservative ad- 
justments. 

The entire essay, of which the above quotations 
are but a small part, is likewise rich in typical 
pedaguese expressions. Almost at random, in 
paragraphs not given here we find "the soul's 
assertion of its right to exist as an individual 
entity," "imperfectly correlated with environ- 
ment," and its variations, "rapport with its sur- 
roundings" and "full (harmonious adjustments," 
all familiar phrases of modern pedagogical litera- 
ture. 

But the expression which takes the prize after 
all is "physical evolution through internal varia- 
tion leading to exuberance of life." Truly the 
mental evolution of some of the modern writers 
of pedagogy has through internal variation led 
to exuberance of words, if not of ideas. 



Fiftv-seven 



THE TEACHING OF RELIGION 

One of the healthiest features of the modern 
pubHc schools is that they are teaching religion. 
Now the fun of the situation is that the people 
send their children to school, see the school 
houses daily and know the teachers, and yet be- 
lieve the canting cry that the public schools are 
irreligious. While the plain truth is that the 
teachers, as never before, are driving out fanati- 
cism, creedism, fetichism, astrology, demonology 
and scareology in general, and are bringing in 
religion pure and undefiled. They are driving 
out the old chaos of words and are bringing in 
an orderly cosmos of ideas. They are bringing in 
flowers for something more than dissection, and 
poems for something better than analysis ; they 
are giving lessons on life from the simplest 
worm to great Caesar himself ; they are searching 
nature and history for that which is true and 
right ; and so providing better guides than dead 
catechisms to truth and righteousness. Never 
more than to-day was the truth that is in the 
Bible the truth that is in the schools. 

After all the one essential part of a school be- 
side the pupil is the teacher. And the teachers 
are to be considered more than the gormandized 
courses of study set to guide them, more than 
the non-expert boards of education who meddle 
with the work of experts, more than the superin- 
tendents, inspectors, supervisors and specialists. 

Fifty-eight 



who superintend, inspect, supervise and special- 
ize ad nauseam. 

And the best proof that the plaints of paid 
religionists about irreligious schools are uncalled 
for, is that now, more than ever before, there 
are cleaner, honester, more kindly teachers, more 
of the good Samaritans and less of priests and 
Levites, and that the life of these teachers. — not 
so much as it should be or will be, but more than 
it was, — is a daily lesson in reverence for God 
and the eternal verities. 




Fifty-nine 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

VOCABULARY 

The educational ideal. Such a course of in- 
struction as will leave a man just as sensible as 
he would be without it. 

Psychology. That branch of learning by which 
a man so profoundly contemplates the internal 
workings of a clock that he is able to construct 
another just like it, — which won't go. 

Socratic method. Asking questions you can't 
answer. 

Development lesson. Working up to the sub- 
ject of pomology by beginning with Adam and 
Eve. At each step the pupils guess what is in 
the mind of the teacher. A valuable preparation 
for the system of education by examination. 

Dogma of co-education. The proposition that 
a woman is no better than a man. 

Apperception. The pedagogical holy ghost. 

Apperceptive masses. Pedagogical sacraments. 

Rational method. My method. 

Natural method. My method. 

Logical method. My method. 

True method. My method 

Adolescence. The topic under which immod- 
est ideas are reduced to pedagogical terms. 

Sixty-three 



The Hve formal steps. The method of pro- 
cedure through a vacuum. 

School teacher. Once a male defective ; now 
a female complete, except the trousseau. 

Doctrine of interest. The conception of an 
instructor as a jumping- jack. 

Board of education. A commission of experts 
in education trying to run a sawmill. 

Concept. According to Hamilton something 
that cannot be imagined. 

Percept. Purely imaginary. 

''A" paper or recitation. One in which the 
pupil guesses at least 90 per cent, of what is in 
the teacher's mind. 

Intensii'e instruction. That of a slim, nervous 
schoolmistress, weig^hing little, if any, over one 
hundred pounds. 

Extensive instruction. That of an expansively 
built schoolmistress, weighing in the neighbor- 
hood of two hundred pounds, — dressed. 

Expensive instruction. Any of it. 

Culture epoch theory. Timing the teaching of 
events to corresponding stages of the pupil's life; 
e. g., according tO' this theory, internal disturb- 
ances, such as civil wars, are taught to dhildren 
during the period of colic. 

Correlation. A putting together of things that 
fitly go together. When done by a carpenter, it 
is a matter of ordinary sense. When done by a 
school teacher, it is profound revelation of 

Sixty- four 



psychologic pedagogy. Nevertheless many of 
the teacher's correlations are poor relations. 

Methods. (Note the plural, which is particu- 
larly pedagogic). There is nothing methodical 
in the various uses of this word. In general it 
means a way so intricate and essential that the 
end is lost to view or becomes immaterial. 

Nature. Everything that exists except man- 
kind and the child. (For the child see below). 
Also a mysterious goddess presiding over the 
preceding. 

Nature study. The study of everything except 
man and the child ; e. g., of a bumble-bee, a 
dromedary, a cobble stone, a hemlock chip or a 
blueberry. In this connection mankind is to be 
considered as violently and irretrievably opposed 
to nature. The child appears to be a neutral es- 
sence. Care is to be exercised in the use of this 
term. A visit to the zoo to examine monkeys is 
nature study ; or when one monkey carefully ex- 
amines another monkey, as you often see them do 
at the zoo, that is nature study; although it is 
taugiht that monkeys are the ancestors of man. 
But a visit to the old ladies' home is not in the 
line of nature study at all, although the old ladies 
may be ancestors too. 

The ehild. (The definite article and the singu- 
lar number are essential). It is impossible to 
give any vernacular term for this expression. 
As above noted the child is neither in the division 
of mankind nor of nature. To use a technical 

Sixtv-five 



expression, it seems to be a concept rather than 
a percept. It is referred to as if it were a piece 
of bric-a-brac. Note the following characteristic 
pedagogic expressions : "study the child," "de- 
velop the child," "preserve the adjustments of the 
child," "the teacher reflected in the attitude of 
the child." 

Child study. The psychological vivisection of 
the child. It may exist co-ordinately with na- 
ture study ; and hence it must flourish in inverse 
ratio to the study of human nature. 

Harmony zvith nature. The meaning is still 
in dispute. Whatever it is, it is evidently not 
possible with mankind, but is approximately at- 
tainable with the child. See adjustments. 

Self -activity. When a pupil fixes the pin, that 
is self-activity. When somebody else places the 
pin and the pupil sits upon it, that, curiously 
enough, is not self-activity, x^s non-self-activity 
is never by any means mentioned in works on 
teaching, the ordinary term for self-activity is 
plain activity. 

Abnormal school. Any school that is not a 
normal school ; also sometimes a normal school. 

Correspondence course. Edification by type- 
writer. These courses are most successful in in- 
culcating the higher virtues and in teadhing such 
industrial branches as swimming, lion-taming 
and diabolo. 

Adjustments, re-adjustments, etc. These are 
samples of a large number of words used in peda- 

Sixty-six 



gogy with no appreciable meaning. They are by 
some thought to be mere Wind words, such as 
those employed in secret codes. Rather they are 
used for their impressiveness, with an effect 
verging between metrical and hypnotic. 




Sixty-seven 



OCT 16 1909 



